This 2010 Serbian language horror drama tells the story of a retired porn star, Milos, who is tempted to make one final film by an offer of money from a mysterious director. The film's would-be director tells him that the film is intended as an 'artistic project' made for the foreign market. However, it soon becomes clear that the project will require Milos to perform some degrading, violent and murderous acts.
Classification issues
- Sexual violence
- Characters witness or engage in acts of sexual violence, including a women being suffocated with a man's penis after her teeth are extracted and a sequence implying the rape of a newborn baby. In another scene a character is made to perpetrate acts of sexual violence and incest while drugged, including beheading a woman and engaging in sexual acts with her body.
- Violence
- Scenes of strong bloody violence include a man's head being bludgeoned, a man's throat being torn out and a prosthetic erect penis being forced into a man's empty eye socket. Very strong visual and verbal references to sex and sexual violence also occur, including to bestiality and paedophilia.
- Sex
- Scenes of strong sex include masturbation, oral sex, group sex and sexual thrusting, as well as simulated ejaculation onto a woman's face.
- Additional issues
- There is infrequent use of very strong language (‘c**t’) and frequent use of strong language (‘f**k’, ‘motherf**ker’).
Video classification
A Serbian Film was initially submitted to the BBFC for home entertainment release on 10 August 2010.
The film was also scheduled to be shown at London FrightFest on August 29. Normally, FrightFest operates under an agreement with the local licensing authority, in this case Westminster Council, allowing films that have not yet been classified by the BBFC to be screened without a certificate to an adults-only audience. However, due to rumours about the film's extreme content, Westminster Council made the unusual decision to require the film to first be classified by the BBFC for the festival screening. The BBFC therefore needed to arrive at a decision on a potentially difficult and controversial film within nineteen days, if the FrightFest screening was to proceed as planned.
Accordingly, the film was viewed for the first time on 13 August. Given the film's reputation and the need to arrive at a decision as soon as possible, the film was viewed by two Examiners, plus the two Senior Examiners. Following this, the film was also seen by the BBFC's Head of Policy, the Director, the Vice Presidents and the President. In addition, a further screening was arranged so that other Examiners could have an opportunity to see the film and express their views. As is normal with such a contentious feature, there were a range of views expressed about the film and the extent to which it conflicted with the BBFC’s published Guidelines and classification policies.
Ultimately, it was concluded that numerous cuts would be required before the film could be classified at 18. The main issues for the BBFC were scenes of sexual and sexualised violence and scenes juxtaposing images of sex and sexual violence with images of children. Although the filmmakers had clearly taken trouble to avoid exposing any of the young actors to anything disturbing or indecent, and had offered to show the BBFC evidence of the dummy props used in the film's most difficult scenes, the BBFC's Guidelines at the time nonetheless cautioned that 'portrayals of children in a sexualised or abusive context' may require compulsory cuts.
On 25 August, the BBFC presented the film's distributor with a cuts list. In total, 49 individual cuts were required, across 11 scenes. It was estimated that around three minutes 48 seconds would need to be removed. Although this might seem like a large number of cuts at first, many of the cuts were very small.
Recognising that the film was intended as a political allegory which intended – and needed – to shock as part of its overall thesis, the BBFC attempted to construct the cuts carefully so that the message of the film, as well as the meaning of each individual scene, would be preserved. However, the extent of the cuts did mean it would be difficult, but not impossible, for the distributor to make the necessary changes and have the film classified in time for the screening on 29 August.
Ultimately, the organisers of FrightFest decided they did not wish to screen a censored version of A Serbian Film, even if one could be prepared in time, and the screening was cancelled. Nonetheless, a cut version was prepared and submitted to the BBFC on 21 October. This was checked by BBFC Examiners and it was found that all requested cuts had been made although, in a few cases, scenes had been slightly overcut for continuity reasons. This version of the film – which had been cut by a total of four minutes and twelve seconds – met the BBFC's requirements and was classified for video release at 18 without further cuts, on 28 October.
Cinema classification
In the meantime, the film had also been submitted to the BBFC for cinema classification.
Initially, the distributor had hoped the BBFC might require fewer cuts for cinema release. However, the BBFC concluded that the same concerns applied for theatrical release and a cuts list, mirroring that issued for home entertainment, was issued.
The cut version was examined on 23 November 2010 and was classified in the same BBFC-approved cut version on 24 November.
Public reaction
Following its release, the BBFC received correspondence from people who were disappointed that A Serbian Film had been cut, as well as from people who felt it should never have been classified at all. Some viewers of the cut version wrote to the BBFC complaining they were disturbed by the cut version and that the BBFC intervention was insufficient.
Subsequent attempts to screen the uncut version of the film at various locations around the UK have proven unsuccessful, with a number of local authorities taking Westminster's lead and refusing permission for the uncut version of the film to be shown, most notably in Bournemouth where a proposed screening in October at the Horror Film Festival was blocked. However, a single private screening did occur in London, as part of the Raindance Film Festival, in October 2010. The fact that this was a 'private event', with no admission being charged and to which only invited guests had access, meant that the local council felt it had no authority to prevent the screening taking place.
Nonetheless, to date, there has been no public commercial screening of the uncut version of the film in the UK.
